Coach Jacek Nawrocki instructs his Belchatow players during a time-out

PGE Skra Belchatow coach Jacek Nawrocki: "The first game is always the most difficult in such a tournament. We knew the quality of Paykan because last year they made a wonderful start in Doha by defeating the team from Brazil (Cimed Florianopolis) so we were prepared for a long battle. I am happy that finally we made it through, because sometimes it was not easy at all to cope with the pressure of a continuous point for point."

PGE Skra Belchatow captain Mariusz Wlazly: "It was not that easy to play in a competition hall where we'd trained only once before this game. Moreover, most of the billboards are yellow and really eye-catching, so sometimes it was not that easy to distinguish the ball while attacking or serving. We took many risks from the serving line since we know they are good in attacking with their middle blockers and wanted to avoid this combination, but that was also the reason for the many mistakes we committed. We are a bit tired as we have been playing many matches in the past weeks but we'll take this tournament one game at a time, and we want to get a very good result here."

Paykan coach Peyman Akbari: "Congratulations to PGE Skra Belchatow – they are a great team, with splendid players and they deserved to win the game. We are normally playing in Asian competitions with clubs from China, Korea or Japan, but we are very much looking forward this kind of competition since we want to show that our Volleyball is gradually improving. For the next matches we will go for even more solid performances and hopefully lift the bar even higher. At the end of the game I told my players that I was proud of them because they had played a splendid match and even though we lost 3-2, that was still a great demonstration of our value and quality."

Paykan captain Amir Hosseini: "We are a mix of young players together with others who have more experience. Today we displayed all our skills and character, but we'll analyse our mistakes and go for a win in the next games. We want to finish this tournament in fourth place, this is our ultimate goal."